It’s easy not to see the urgency of a situation when you have a safety net to fall into that will allow you to continually put off or not put much effort into your true calling. However, when that safety net is stripped away from you with no back up plan and no visible light at the end of the tunnel it forces you to think about what you were really put here to do and why on earth aren’t you doing it. Sometimes you think you are doing everything you possibly can when in reality, without that plan B, you find that your efforts could have been grander and more fierce.

I always thought that I had been doing enough in my efforts to really jump start my writing career. I now realize, just as my safety net is being ripped away from me, that there was so much more I could have been doing, and still so much more left for me to do. I can not for the life of me think of a good reason as to why I wasn’t putting this much fierceness and vigor into making my business thrive before now. Maybe it was that I was too afraid of it not working. Maybe what I was really afraid of was the actual success that I know I am entitled to. Whatever the reason, it’s just not a good enough one. I have wasted far too much time being under-productive and relying on that safety net that I thought was a sure thing. I can not dwell on what I can not change but I can change how I do things from here on out.

We sometimes tend to think about everything with that safety net in the back of our minds, thinking that it is always going to be there and that if all else fails, at least we still have that. Until you don’t. Without that extra security we are not only forced to jump in the deep end of the pool with blind faith, but we are forced to make ourselves swim to the surface before we drown. In this world today it is strictly about those that can swim and those that sink. There is no middle ground. Being able to tread water and just stay afloat is not enough to make it. It’s only enough to get by and really how long can we go on just getting by. We can ask ourselves all different kinds of questions to try and figure out why things in our lives are the way they are or how did they get that way but those questions are irrelevant. The only question that you need to answer is when you have that safety net pulled from underneath you, are you going to be able to swim or will you inevitably sink? I don’t plan on drowning when I let go, how about you?

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For anyone who has ever traveled by plane you’ve always heard it said by the flight attendant. “Please remember to put your mask on first and then help those around you who need help.” It never seems to make sense right off when you hear it, especially if you’re traveling with children because in the event that anything should happen you always want to protect your child first. As a parent it’s just a natural instinct. But that statement, as off as it may initially seem, should not only hold true in cases of emergency, but it should also hold true in everyday life. No one can take better care of you then you and if you don’t know how, or learn how, to take care of yourself first then how can you truly be efficient in taking proper care of anyone else?

In life we take on so many roles and create so many identities that it can get easy to loose yourself in it all. You choose your career and then it becomes your driving force and everything that you are about. You get married and then have kids and you’re a spouse and now a parent. You want to be everything to everyone, from your boss, to your spouse and of course your children and sometimes it can become very easy to forget to take care of yourself, or even to abandon the thought of taking care of yourself altogether. But if we don’t take care of ourselves first then how can we guarantee that we will be around to practice that nurturing spirit of wanting to do for others.

I am guilty on all levels of this because it seems as though ever since I had my daughter that I have forgotten the whole concept of doing anything for myself. Everything is about taking care of her and doing for her and I have held true to the phrase that once you have children that there is no more you, everything is just about them. But I am starting to realize that it doesn’t have to be like that and it shouldn’t be. I am a single mother and there is no one else to do for her but me but if I never take any time to take better care of myself and do small little things for myself that keep my sanity in tact then how can I make sure that I am always going to be around for her. If I’m falling apart how can I hold her, or anyone else for that matter, together?

Think of it as an investment in yourself. Realize that taking care of your inner needs and tending to yourself on a regular basis gives you a certain peace of mind that should be cherished and never taken for granted. There has to be a balance in your life in order for things to run effectively and smoothly. You can’t be so busy doing this, that, and the other for everyone but you. You are worth more then that and you deserve to treat yourself as well as you treat everyone else around you. It is not only a sane way of living but a healthy one as well and it works wonders for the creative minds of us writers. It’s not selfish to look out for you. In reality it’s more selfish if you don’t. So the next time you’re taking a flight, listen to those instructions from the flight attendant that we always tend to sleep through and apply them to your everyday life. If you’re not used to doing it, go ahead and try it, put your mask on first for a change.

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Good things come to those who wait but the waiting is always easier said than done. Life has become one big waiting game that always keeps you in limbo and everyday we find ourselves waiting for something, whether it is as trivial as the stop light turning from red to green or something as essential as that job that our whole lives seem to be depending on. I have always had a problem waiting for things to happen and worrying too much that they won’t and it’s because I haven’t always been good at having the patience to wait for things to happen when they are meant to.

People sometimes misconceive having patience as procrastinating and not taking action but I believe that that misconception couldn’t be further from the truth. Patience happens to be inextricably linked with persistence with the only difference between the two being that persistence is visible and patience often is not. But just because something isn’t seen doesn’t mean it’s not there. Being persistent about something is having the tenacity to see it through and is the result of having the patience to stay the course.

As a writer I have found that patience is not only the key component to many successes in life but it’s also what the creative process is built on. No one becomes the established author or an Oscar winning actress overnight. When you want something in life to be successful you not only have to have the will to make it so but you have to have the patience to wait for it to happen. That, for me, is the hard part but I get it. We creative types would love to go from idea to stardom in no time flat but the reality is that that doesn’t always make for the long lasting success that we want. There is a reason why things that are rushed don’t usually turn out the way we want them to and we have to ponder the possibility that it’s because it was forced and because we didn’t believe in ourselves enough to wait for things to happen in their own time.

Patience is necessary. We find that we need it everyday in dealing with the people around us and in the commitments we have made to others and to ourselves. Patience is in waiting for that one person to understand you and respect you for your thoughts and your objectives. It’s waiting for everything that you’ve ever wanted for yourself to come true. Patience is even in the realization that life can not be rushed and that everything must run its own course. In appreciating life and all that it has to offer we need to learn to accept the fact that we don’t always get what we want and when we do it is almost never going to be at the very moment that we want it.

To be determined, to have focus, to have success, you must first have patience and

I must admit that my own patience is tested on a daily basis for what feels like every second of the day. Whether it is in my writing or in what I call a personal life it feels as though I am always left waiting. But I find that if you’re too busy rushing everything along in your life you never get to enjoy the journey that leads you to what it is that you want. The end result isn’t always the best part of the journey, sometimes it’s the things that happened along the way that make it all worthwhile.

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When you hold a mirror up to your life do you ever feel the need to ask yourself, what exactly was it that you were waiting for? Sometimes people get so caught up in what their dreams are that they tend to forget that they aren’t going to come true without the action necessary to make it happen. We make excuses from having too many goals and not enough motivation, to lack of time and no financial means but all of those excuses are just utter procrastination. At some point we have to stop making excuses of why we can’t do something and strive to find the reasons why we can.

I’ve had a rough draft of my life plan pretty much since before I was in high school but of course along the way that plan has been edited and re-edited. Now, as I have made a commitment towards accomplishing my dreams, I realized that I myself have turned into the Queen of procrastination. Somewhere along the path of trying to attain all of my dreams I began to sit down and just wait for them to happen on their own. I managed to mask it as being patient but it was just simply me slacking off and becoming lazy and it made me want to get up and do something about the life I say that I want to have.

I’ll admit that although I know where I slacked off I am still guilty of letting my own self judgment distract me from my dreams. A large part of why people continually procrastinate is that too often we listen to the critic we have within ourselves. That, coupled with the fear that they will either fail, or even worse, that they will actually succeed is a scary thought. We can’t let our self doubt overshadow our lives and keep us from moving forward.

We all at some point wish that there was a button that we could push at any time to reset our lives back to the point where we feel we slacked off. But life doesn’t come with do-overs. To me life is about succeeding and succeeding requires that we do something. The longer we just sit there and watch as life happens the less control we have on where our life goes. We can’t take time for granted and keep thinking that we have time left to do what we want to do. We have to make every second count and appreciate life for all it’s worth. Sitting around just isn’t an option anymore.